Category: Anxiety

Body in Charge: Managing Anxiety by Managing Rest

meganmedinalpc

A tired mind is a restless mind, but, as many sufferers of anxiety know, a restless mind is a mind that resists sleep. It’s a problem that most people experience at some point in their lives, but for people who struggle with anxiety, it can be an endless cycle and one more thing to feel anxious about.

For some, it’s hard to fall asleep. For others, it’s hard to stay asleep. And for many who don’t notice it, they are able to sleep, but their brains never relax enough to achieve the deep, restorative sleep our minds and bodies need to be healthy. For a lot of people, it’s a frustrating mixture of the three.

For this final installment of the Body in Charge: Managing Anxiety series, I offer a few tips for tackling the most challenging anxiety trigger: catching that elusive good night’s rest.

  • Practice good sleep hygiene.
    Do you have a set bed time and wake up time?
    Is it dark and quiet?
    Is the temperature comfortable?
  • Reinforce Sleep Boundaries
    Are you assertive with yourself and others about respecting your rest time?
  • You should glow, not your devices.
    Bright screens, including TVs, are too stimulating right before bed. Even with the “night mode” option turned on, staring at a glowing screen overstimulates the mind for hours after the device has been put away.
  • Resist the infinite scroll.
    Put the phones and tablets away. Fixed staring at the endless supply of information retrieved by Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and news blogs activates our most anxious feeder emotions and behaviors: worry, insecurity, longing, jealousy, loss, paranoia, ambition, perfectionism, hypervigilance, and hypercontrol.
  • If you can’t sleep, rest.
    Many people with sleep issues exacerbate their restlessness by worrying about their lack of sleep and trying to force it to happen. But sleep, like happiness, is a peripheral experience: It’s impossible to obtain if you look directly at it. Instead, designate sleep time as “rest time” and truly let yourself rest: stay in bed, lying down in the dark, with no distractions or stimulations, and give yourself permission think about things you enjoy or look forward to, or nothing at all. You might not be able to control whether you sleep, but you can control the quality of rest you get.
  • Incorporate other Managing Anxiety tips
    Take an inventory of the stimulants and depressants you consume, practice regular deep breathing exercises, move your body, and stay hydrated. The daily consideration of your physical needs is not only mindful and self-compassionate, but will eventually relax the body and soothe the mind, increasing your chances for a good night’s sleep.

And if these tips don’t help or you need to enlist someone to hold you accountable to following them, you can always contact me for more help. I’m Megan, and you can contact me here, call 432-278-1617, or email meganmedina1217@gmail.com to schedule an appointment today.

 

Body in Charge: Manage Anxiety by Managing Your Breath

meganmedinalpc

Yesterday, for my Body in Charge: Managing Anxiety series, I wrote about how cutting down on stimulant substances can improve anxiety symptoms. In today’s post, I’ll offer an even simpler strategy: breathe.

Because the mind and body are inextricably linked, they must work together as one. This is why, when our minds are hyperactivated with worry, our bodies tend to mimic the problem with hyperactivated physical symptoms: shallow breathing, overheatingA, rapid pulse, etc, even when we’re physically healthy. While it is sometimes difficult to control the mind when anxiety hits, it’s fairly simple to control the body through breathing, making it one of the most effective interventions in anxiety research.

It takes practice, but what many of my clients have discovered is that if they practice deep breathing during an anxiety episode, the body has no choice but to calm down, and the mind has no choice but to follow. Oxygenated blood and expanded airways will slow down the pulse, and help soothe a troubled mind and body,

And don’t just use it as an intervention! Deep breathing techniques work best when practiced regularly to decrease the severity of anxiety symptoms and ultimately prevent them! Try some of the following activities for a week or two and see if you notice a difference:

  1. Begin and end each day with a set of 10 long, deep breaths, holding the breath for a few seconds between inhalation and exhalation.
  2. Practice yoga breathing, or deep belly breathing, by inhaling air into the bottom of the lungs, so the belly poofs out when the lungs are full. (This takes practice!)
  3. When doing physical activity, check in with the body regularly to make sure you are breathing deeply.
  4. If you have an office job, or spend lots of time in front of the computer, set a timer to take frequent breaks so you can pause, sit back, and take a deep breath at regular intervals.
  5. Download a guided meditation app so you can take short lessons about breathing and mindfulness. (Some apps have meditations as short as 3 minutes, but you might find yourself wanting to do more!)
  6. Try a yoga or tai chi video on YouTube. They’re free, you don’t even need a mat, and the practice of slow movements coordinated with breathing will help you develop the habit of deep breathing.

All of these above activities are simple, effective, and proven ways to settle an anxious mind and body. And not only that, but they also work to improve your own sense of physical fitness and wellness.

Body in Charge: Managing Anxiety by Managing Substances

meganmedinalpc

Caffeine, pseudoephedrine, nicotine, even chocolate could be making your anxiety worse.

With Starbucks on every corner, pseudoephedrine in every allergy medication, and energy drinks becoming one of the most popular beverages in the US, stimulant consumption among most demographics in the US is at an all-time high. Most people talk about their reliance on these substances as if it’s a nutritional need: “I can’t even move until I’ve had my coffee,” is something we’ve all heard before. With stimulant consumption so normalized it’s no wonder anxiety rates have sky-rocketed in recent years.

Most people are so accustomed to the physiological effects of stimulants (raised pulse rate, shallow breathing, muscle tension, rapid thinking, etc.) that they hardly notice the them, and rarely consider their compounded effects. Hours, days, even weeks and months of stimulant consumption can accumulate until heightened activation of the body’s nervous system becomes the norm. Add in a few extra worries, and you’ve got the perfect habitat for a full-blown panic attack.

When a client comes to me with complaints about anxiety, one of the first things I assess is their level of stimulant consumption. Many times, after cutting out (or at least cutting down) the following items, they find their anxiety attacks disappear!

These are some of the things to decrease, or cut out of your system before any therapy for anxiety will be effective:

  1. Caffeine (coffee, teas, energy drinks, chocolate, especially if taken after lunch)
  2. Pseudoephedrine (often in cold and allergy products that have ‘D’ in the name, i.e. Allegra D)
  3. Sugar
  4. Some dietary supplements for mood or weight loss (often have caffeine or herbal stimulants)
  5. Ritalin, Adderall or other stimulants for ADD/ADHD (consult your doctor if this is prescribed. Your doctor may have other suggestions if you share your concerns about your anxiety symptoms.)
  6. Nicotine (cigarrettes, e-cigs such as Juuls, gums)
  7. Alcohol (a depressant, not a stimulant, alcohol can affect deep sleep REM cycles, making a person feel more tired, anxious, and depressed than they would be with some good night’s rest)

Cut out or cut down these substances, and you might see your anxiety symptoms decrease or disappear completely!

Body in Charge: Managing Anxiety

meganmedinalpc

Five simple things you can do to manage anxiety.

For people who struggle with anxiety, negative thoughts and emotions can overwhelm the nervous system enough to trigger real, measurable physical symptoms. Sometimes those physical symptoms can feel so extreme, it feels like a real medical emergency is happening. Sometimes those physical symptoms get so bad, some people wind up in the emergency room, only to find out that what their experiencing is an anxiety attack, not the heart attack or stroke they thought they were having.

The uncomfortable physical symptoms we experience from an anxiety attack (rapid heart rate, rapid breathing, fever, shaking, etc) occur because the mind–the thinking and feeling parts of the brain–has been able to override the body– the autonomic nervous system, which regulates automatic functions, like breathing and heart rate– all those things we do without thinking, and need to do in order to stay alive.

When we don’t pay attention to things that are bothering us, when we shove them aside without acknowledging them, or manage them in unhealthy ways, our brains will sometimes throw a temper tantrum to get our attention. That’s a simple explanation for anxiety: having physical symptoms we can’t ignore due to emotional symptoms we are either ignoring or not managing well.

This is good news! Because knowing anxiety is a physical issue means we can manage anxiety with physical interventions. Sure, your problems are real, and your worries about them may be valid, but you can live more comfortably with those problems by changing a few things. Here are five simple things you can do to lessen the frequency and severity of anxiety attacks:

  1. Cut added stimulants and depressants
  2. Breathe more
  3. Move more
  4. Drink more water
  5. Rest more

Sounds too easy? The important thing to remember is that although our minds sometimes take over our other body systems, our bodies can always take back control by fostering a healthy, calm environment for our brains. These five steps will help that happen.

Still skeptical? I’ll write a bit more explaining each step in future posts.